SharePoint Governing Information Architecture

SharePoint Governing Information Architecture:

Governing the information architecture is a key to the successful use of SharePoint Server and requires the participation of business managers, content managers, information workers, site designers, and IT professionals.

Defining information-governance plans requires an understanding of the site topology, the purpose of each offering (example Intranet, Extranet, OneDrive etc.), and preferably a knowledge of future planned offerings, such as business intelligence.

Information policies need to be defined for each site within the SharePoint deployment. A policy needs to be defined per topic area for each site offering.

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Document Library Planning:

Document Library Planning:
The following are some items to follow in regard to document library planning:

1)      Enable the require checkout option for editing

2)      Keep the number of documents in a view below 2000 items if possible

3)      Limit the number of major versions typically recommend set to 25-50

4)      Educate users on proper naming conventions example:

IT Contacts Doc = BAD

IT_Contacts_Doc = GOOD

IT Contacts 7142017 = BAD

IT_Contacts_7_2017 = GOOD

5)      Think about if turning on metadata navigation or using document sets makes sense based on the data that will be housed in a said library.

Metadata navigation can be used when it make sense to have the ability to dynamically filter and find content in lists and libraries by using a navigation hierarchy tree control to apply different metadata-based filters to the view.

Document Sets can be used if one has a group of related documents that can be created in one step and then managed as a single entity.

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SharePoint Governance Policies - Taxonomy

Each type of site can and should have its own set of policies:

Common sites that fit this realm are:

·         Mysites

·         Teamsites

·         Project Sites

·         Blogs

·         Wikis

Information Governance Policies

·         Users want and need to find information fast

·         They want the applicable content and data via a useful navigation taxonomy

·         Use of metadata can make it easy to search for and compare related items of information

Site Structure

·         Think how users need to work

·         What do they need to find first and fast

Examples ->

Human Resource information

General Search

People Search

Organization Chart

Organization Knowledge Base

Organization News

Information Technology Help (Guides and Videos)

Private / Team Collaboration / Ad-Hoc Collaboration

·         Sites are for departmental and/or divisional teams such as Finance, IT, HR etc.

·         They are permissioned as such so only the proper individuals have access

Project Collaboration

·         Sites are used mainly by PMO to manage Projects during the project lifespan

·         Temporary content

·         Controlled and moderately governed

 

Client Team Sites (Restricted)

These sites are used to store documentation related to clients with a site for each client

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SharePoint Back-up Strategy Planning

 The following are some items to consider when planning an on-premise backup strategy:

See the table columns below for items to be aware of and in this example some data was entered to see what could be needed:

Intranet – On-Premise
	Current database sizes per site collection:	Site Specs	Growth in last year	Estimated additional needed disk space for SharePoint	Estimated growth per year
	93 gigs	875 sites, 21757 lists, 257477 items.	45 gigs	300 gigs   (this is to perform farm back-up and site collection back-up)	50 gigs

Possibly Back-up policy:

Onsite available - > 7 dailies, 4 weekly, one monthly

Off-site available -> 3 monthly, 6 weekly, 14 dailies

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Governance – Proper Naming Conventions

The following are some items for consider for naming conventions:

Have format for database names – example->  WSS_Content_Sitename

Real world example ->  WSS_Content_IT

Have a format for document library naming (example IT_Core_Docs)

Have server name convention which – plans for growth

(example spweb1, spweb2, spweb3, spcentad1, spworkflow1, spsearch1, spdist1)

Names of files should be short and not utilize spaces – use _ instead

Names of view – should be short and descriptive (example: ITContacts or IT_Contacts)

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Governance Site Planning – Part 2

The following are some items to consider for site planning:

Will approval be turned on and who will approve content?

Who will secure sensitive information?

Who will have the permissions to create new sites?

Who will create and publish content?

Who will have the ability to customize sites?

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Governance Site Planning – Part 1

The following are some items to consider for site planning:

·         Decide if users will manage - own websites

·         Decide if users will create their own sites

·         Decide how users will use metadata (managed metadata navigation, managed metadata column or document sets)

·         Train users before they are granted permission to site

·         Decide if owner, member, visitor groups will be enough as far as permissions and who will grant access

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